Go Tell the Spartans (35 page)

Group Icepick was nearly silent as it moved, only the crunch of feet through the snow and the hiss of the sleds. There were ten of those, each pulled by half a platoon, bending into their rope harnesses. The loads were covered by white sheeting that bid the lumpiness of mortars and heavy machine guns, recoilless rifles, boxes and crates. The men trotting silently through the forest undergrowth in platoon columns were heavily burdened as well, with loads of ammunition and rifle grenades, spare barrels and extra belts for the machine guns, light one-shot rockets in their fiberglass tubes, loops of det cord. They showed little strain and no confusion, only a hard intent concentration.

Well, Skilly was right,
he thought; training to the point just short of foundering them was the only way.

There was a sudden burst of small-arms fire and shouting from just ahead and to the left.

"Report!" he snapped.

"Sir, First platoon, E Company, Cit's comin' down off the ridge. 'Bout a platoon of 'em, we're engaging."

Rotten luck,
he thought. Still, you couldn't expect the enemy to cooperate with the plan.
Act quickly.

"Kolnikov," he said, keying his circuit to the E Company leader. "Detach First and Third to me, you're in charge, get Icepick where it's going and
fast,
then set up. Headquarters platoon," he continued to the men around him, "Signalers and techs, accompany Company Leader Kolnikov until I rejoin you. The rest of you, follow me. Move!"

He angled to the left and increased his pace to a pounding lope, all he could manage in this gravity with what he was carrying. The men followed, and all down the column the pace picked up as the orders were relayed. There were no cleared lanes through the brush upslope, but his men wormed through it quickly enough; visibility dropped to five meters or less, and stray rounds began clipping through the branches unpleasantly close. Grenades were going off, and he could hear the hiss of the light rockets the guerillas carried. A glance at his wrist.

0300. One hour twenty minutes.

"Sutchukil here," a voice said in his ear as he went to one knee and waved the others past him. "The enemy aircraft is down."

"Good," Niles said. Intelligence would be interested, and the "consultants" were as eager as their stoneface training allowed to get their hands on Falkenberg's electronics. A prisoner would be a bonus too, although Legion people were said to be very stubborn.
God, it's getting
comfortable
to think of fifteen things at once, I must getting used to this business.
"Advise the nearest officer to send a patrol. Out."

"Wake her up."

A cold tingling over the surface of her skin, and Lieutenant Lefkowitz blinked her eyes open. She was lying against a packing crate, in a gully that was not quite a cave. There was a strip of faint light thirty meters up, where moonlight leaked through interlacing branches across the narrow slit in the stone, a little more from shaded blue-glow lanterns. Below the walls widened out, vanishing into darkness beyond. To her right the gully narrowed and made a dog-leg; that must be to the outside. Men were moving in and out; out with boxes and crates from the stacks along the walls—
skis and sleds I
knew
it, that thing with the propellor must be a powered snowsled—
and on the other side of the cave she could see the cots and medical equipment of a forward aid-station. Nobody in it yet, the medics standing around watching or helping with the work.

The air was cold enough to make her painfully conscious of the thinness of her khaki garrison uniform, and smelled of blood and medicines and gunoil and the mules stamping and snorting somewhere back in the darkness.

"She's awake." The voice was kneeling at her elbow; a woman in camouflage jacket and leather pants like all the rest she could see moving around, with corporal's stripes and a white capital M on the cuff. The shoulder flashes held nothing she recognized except a red = sign on a black circle.

"Fit to stand rigorous interrogation?" An officer, from his stance and sidearm; Asian, short and stocky-muscular. In the same uniform as the others, but without insignia, and he wore something that was either a long knife or a short sword in a curved laquered sheath at his side. She felt a slight chill as his eyes met hers. Complete disinterest, the way a tired man looked at flies.

The medic nodded. "Bruises, wrenched ankle, cut on the arm, slight chill, no concussion," she said, as she packed her equipment and headed back to the tent with the wounded.

"Stand her up."

Hands gripped her and wrenched her to her feet; she bit the inside of her mouth to keep from crying out at the pain in her head. The enemy officer turned to a bank of communications equipment, an odd mixture of modern-looking modules and primitive locally manufactured boxes.
Very odd. None of the advanced equipment are models I could place.
Functions, yes, but not these plain black boxes without maker's marks or even the slightly bulky squared-off look of milspec. His hands skipped across a console, and a printer spat hardcopy. He held it up, looked at her, nodded and raised a microphone.

"Base One, Intelligence, Tetsuko, please."

There was a moment of silence; Debbie Lefkowitz used it to control her breathing, and the throbbing and dizziness in her head receded. Very faintly, the sound of explosions echoed in through the entrance and the opening overhead. The communicator chirped.

"Triphammer Base Beta, Yoshida here," he said. "We have a live survivor from the enemy surveillance plane; Lieutenant Deborah Lefkowitz, one of Falkenberg's people, recon interpretation specialist. Field Prime is with the advance element. Yes. Yes, sir, I'm sending all the equipment we salvaged in an hour or so with the next evacuation sled. Sir, I have no facilities or drugs for—yes, sir." The printer spat more paper with soundless speed, as the officer looked around.

"Sergeant Sikelianos," he called.

"Sir?"

"I don't have time to attend to this, and your guard squad might as well be making themselves useful. Here's a list of information we need from this prisoner: get it out of her, but she's got to be ready to travel in a couple of hours; Tetsuko wants to do a more thorough debriefing. See to it."

"Yes,
sir.
"
Sikelianos was a thickset man, you could tell that even through parka and armor, with a rifle slung muzzle-down across his back. Thick close-cropped beard and hair twisted into a braid down his neck, both blue-black. He was grinning, as well, showing white, even teeth with the slightly blueish sheen of implants.

"Remember Field Prime's Rule, Sikelianos. One chance."

"Yessir. Come on, you four."

The four soldiers—
armed men at least, if not soldiers,
she thought with contempt beneath her fear—tied her hands behind her back and hustled her into the dark area where the rock did meet overhead. Past a herd of mules within a rope corral, into echoing silence and chill; the cold was beginning to drain her resources, and she shivered slightly.

"OK, this is good enough," the guerilla noncom said. It was almost absolutely dark to her eyes; they would be using their nightsight goggles. Hands came out of nowhere and threw her back against the wall; she saw an explosion of colored lights behind closed lids. Then real light. Sikelianos had switched on a small hook-shaped flashlight dangling through a loop on his webbing belt. It underlit the men's faces, caught gleams from items of equipment slung about them.

"OK," Sikelianos said; he was smiling, and she could see him wet his lips behind the white puffing of his breath. "We got some questions for you, mercenary bitch. You going to answer?"

"Lieutenant Deborah Lefkowitz, Falkenberg's Mercenary Legion, 11A7782-ze-l
uhhhh.
"
He had hit her under the breastbone, fast and very hard. She dropped to the ground, gagging and coughing as she struggled to draw air into paralyzed lungs. They waited until she was merely panting before drawing her up again.

"You going to answer the questions?" Sikelianos said, brushing his knuckles across his lips.

"Under the Mercenary Code and the Laws of War—"

This time the fist struck her almost lightly, so that she was able to keep erect by leaning against the rock. Again he waited; when she straightened up, he had drawn the knife worn hilt-down at his left shoulder. The blade was a dull black curve, but the edge caught the faint light of the shielded torch. His left hand held a pair of pliers. He laughed, putting the point of the knife under her chin; she could feel the skin part, it must be shaving-sharp. A tiny stab of pain, and the warmth of blood on her cold-roughened skin.

"You mercs and the Cits, you deserve each other." The knifepoint rose and she craned upward, head tilted back until the muscles creaked. "Now, by now even a stupid cunt like you ought to realize something. This is the Revolution, we're not playing no stinking game, and we got our
own
rules. Like, everything is either
them
or
us,
you understand? Other rules we sort of make up as we go along."

"But," he went on, "we do got a few real ironclad
laws.
Field Prime's Rule, that's one. You listening?" He leaned closer. "Outsiders get just
one chance
to cooperate. Savvy? You answer our questions, we take you back to the officer and you get a nice warm blanket and a safe trip to Base One, everything real nice, you can sit out the war in a cell. Maybe we even exchange you. You don't answer . . . well, you will. Up to you, smooth or rough."

"Lieutenant Deborah Lefkowitz, Falkenberg's Mercenary Legion, 11A7732-ze-l," she began. Then she closed her eyes and clamped her mouth tight as he gripped the collar of her jacket and slit it open down the front.

"Hey, Sarge," one of the guerillas laughed. "Goosebumps—maybe she likes it rough."

There was a shark's amusement in his voice. "I always got the pliers to fall back on."

Deborah Lefkowitz remained silent when a boot tripped her. She only began to scream when they stretched her legs wide and slashed the pants off her hips.

"
Goddamn it!
"
Lysander swore to himself in quiet frustration, as the cry of
incoming
echoed across his position. The engineers stayed at their positions long enough to fire the breeching charges, stubby mortars that dragged lines of plastic tubing stuffed with explosives through the air across the minefield. Then they copied everyone else and dove for cover, many of them rolled under the bellies of the six armored cars that had come forward. The assault company of infantry had no such option, nor had there been time for it to dig in. They hugged the earth and prayed or cursed according to inclination; a few managed to roll into already occupied holes dug by the Scout company.

"Overshot," he murmured a moment later; there were mortar rounds falling on them, but the rockets . . .
on Peter,
he thought.
Well, he has those armored cans. . . .

"Sir." The Legion helmet identified the speaker, Junior Lieutenant Halder, Fourth Platoon, the ones he had sent down to scout the woods. "We're engaged, ran into an enemy unit in the thick bush. They were moving south, sir, hard to tell how many, but they're loaded for bear. I'm getting heavy rifle grenade and antipersonnel rocket fire, sir."

"Calderon, switch the company mortars to support Third Command."

"Owensford here."

"Sir, Code—" he punched at the keyboard woven into his cuff. "Code ALGERNON, repeat Algernon. Code MOSEBY." Enemy forces in large but unknown strength west of my position.

"Copy. The land-line should be connected now; link to Sastri to call in fire support. Hurt them, Kicker Six, that's what you're out there for."

Another blast of shrapnel from the antipersonnel bomblets swept over the command caravan.
Goddamn it, I'm an Infantryman, not a turtle,
Owensford thought. Although there was a certain comfort to having 20mm of hardened plate between you and unpleasantness.

Movement in the ravine. Hmmmm.
Up north around Slater's column, the enemy had been using infiltration tactics down the wooded corridors. Potentially more of a problem here than there, since the proportion of forest was greater.

He looked at the map; squares were beginning to fill in for enemy units. The tiltrotor's sacrifice had been worth a lot; now they knew where to fly their drones, and they were getting more data.

So. What do we know?